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Sunday, December 9, 2012

Max Factor "Fantasy Fire" is one of those polish purchases which I wouldn't want to admit IRL. Only nail polish connoisseurs such as my lovely readers will understand. :)

"Fantasy Fire" is said to be a dupe of Clarins 230, a highly coveted polish which sadly has been discontinued and will run you about $100 on Ebay. Crazy right? So when I paid $30 for F.F. I thought I was being smart until I realized the tiny bottle (4.5 ml) is about the same as I would pay for a similar size 230 (if that was offered for sale). Most nail polish bottles are between 13-15 ml. So really had I just bought three F.F.s, it would be the same as one 230. Sigh.

Anyway on to the pictures. Sorry they are chipped but I was just taking these pics for myself and was recently organizing old photos and came across these and figure I should post them anyways. This was 1 or 2 coats F.F. (sorry I can't remember this was taken in May) over a neon true purple Color Club polish (I can't remember the name either!) This also looks fantastic over a plain black creme or a vivid royal blue like Revlon "Royal". Magenta might be nice too, but I have yet to try that.

Look at that color change!!! ::Drool::

Girly Bits, an indie seller, has a near dupe called "Shift Happens" which I bought from Llarowe for $12 for 15ml. I figure I needed a back up for F.F.! As for the real deal, if you live in England you might have been able to get your hands on F.F. since it was released there. And not as expensive as Ebay prices. Unfortunately Max Factor is no longer sold in the US. I really liked that brand and I remember they were the first to come out with the semi permanent lip colors. Although Covergirl has the same now with much better formulas since I guess cosmetic chemistry technology has improved over the years!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

(LOL @ my Photoshop skillz! I still treat Photoshop like it is MS Paint)

The newest nail drama (move over Lynnderella!) is that Sinful Colors released a "how to" nail art pamphlet at Walgreens stores and used at least 2 well known blogger's photos without permission!!! Not only that, but in one of the photos Sinful Colors polish wasn't even used and they claimed you could get the nail art effect by using a toothpick and swirling, when it was actually achieved by stamping! Oh and get this! In the other photo they actually took the time to photoshop out the blogger's watermark!!! Wow if this isn't sketchy, I don't know what is.

What gets me the most is that if Sinful Colors had reached out and asked these bloggers for permission to use their photos, even for free, provided they would credit them, I am almost certain they or any other blogger would gladly say yes. Most bloggers blog as a labor of love and would be happy for the exposure. I am also surprised that Sinful Colors (recently taken over by Revlon?) didn't have the resources to do the manicures themselves and take their own pictures.

So far Sinful Colors, Revlon, or Walgreens hasn't responded to this situation. I heard that Sinful Colors had been deleting outraged comments on their Facebook page. Shame shame shame!

Check out these links for more info directly from the effected bloggers:

Oh wow it gets even better!!! I found an interesting picture on Nouveaucheap. THEY PHOTOSHOPPED THE NAILS ONTO THEIR MODELS FOR THE DISPLAY!!!! #FAILFAILFAIL

This was posted on the Sinful Colors Facebook page where many outraged individuals have expressed their disgust for the company: "Sinful Colors is a polish line put out by Mirage Cosmetics. They are then owned by Revlon. But if you would like your voice to be heard, literally, contact them at: Mirage Cosmetics Inc., 10721 Tucker St, Beltsville, MD 20705(301) 937-6061. Happy dialing."

I am still trying to track down the (possibly) unidentified blogger from the 3rd photo in the pamphlet. I am looking for a better quality photo of that half moon manicure. If someone has one or a link to one, either email it to me or go to Tineye.com and do a reverse image search. And to any bloggers out there, Tineye is a great tool to see if your pictures are being stolen (but only online).----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*2nd UPDATE*

Revlon issued this statement on their Facebook page:"Dear SinfulColors fans --- We are aware of the issue regarding SinfulColors imagery and are taking steps to resolve this unacceptable error. We deeply respect the rights of our blogger friends and are taking the following measures:1. We have reached out to the bloggers, Jeanette and Mary, to apologize and quickly resolve the issue.2. We are correcting any materials featuring the bloggers’ images as soon as possible.3. We are putting additional measures in place to prevent this from happening again.

Please accept our heartfelt apology and know that we are doing everything we can to make things right."

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Ok I can not believe I'm saying this but... I am glitter bombed out! I have always liked glitter, but I think once the Burlesque Collection from OPI came out (late 2010) I went into a glitter frenzy. I needed my nails to be sparkely. I wanted my glitter bigger, badder, more holo, more duochome, more unique... I couldn't get enough. And then once the indie custom polish craze hit... Oh man! It was like crack. I went into a free for all. My nails were constantly blingtastic. And I loved it. But then one day, my cuticles and nail beds starting shouting back at me. The amount of pure acetone remover and picking required to remove these glitters started to take it's toll. Combined with the fact that I felt like I had seen *everything*, suddenly plain creme polishes seemed... exotic. It had been awhile!! I decided to take a hiatus from glitter. And from my own personal frankening.

Right now I am really into bright vivid pastels. Maybe it is the time of the year, bright pastels have "spring" written all over them. The China Glaze Electro Pop Collection is really fitting the bill. I picked up a few colors. "Aquadelic" is a near dupe for "For Audrey" (also from China Glaze, in case you didn't already know that!!) "Aquadelic" is slightly brighter.

Anyway, I hope I get around to photographing and posting some of my indie polishes I have picked up recently! Don't get me wrong.. I still love glitter and more specifically the indie polish trend. The level of creativity and beauty I have seen in these polishes made never ceases to amaze me.

This was my birthday manicure from a few weeks ago. I was wearing "Aquadelic" and decided to give it a little bit of a glam touch :)

2 coats of "Aquadelic" and "Pirouette My Whistle" as a 2 layer gradation (not gradient!!) on the tips :)

Thursday, March 1, 2012

About a month ago I received my epic haul from Llarowe. Included in the package were my Lynnderellas! Most importantly, I finally got my hands on "Connect The Dots". That was the polish that made me fall in love with Lynnderella. Surely you have all seen swatches of "Connect The Dots" already, so this is nothing new and ground breaking, but I still love it.

The base is an Essie color, I can not remember the name nor can I locate the bottle at the moment. If anyone recognizes the color, tell me the name in the comments section! *EDIT*- It is called "School of Hard Rocks"
I am not quite sure how many coats of CTD was used. I had my nails done at the salon (I'm getting lazy with doing my own nails lately), and my nail lady did the standard polish application procedure which is to gently wipe the excess on the inside of the neck of the bottle and apply a thin coat. This doesn't work with Lynns due to the amount and different sizes of glitter. The result was that only the tiny dot glitter went in to the nail. It looked like salt and pepper! So when I got home I applied another coat of CTD, but this time I applied it without wiping off the excess, and pushing the glitter evenly around on the nail.

So as much as I love Lynnderella polishes, I think I am satisfied with what I have in my collection (Connect The Dots, The Glittering Crowd, Snow Angel, One Nutty Fruit Cake, All Hallow's Eve, Shape Shifter, and Bride of Franken). There are a few new ones I would like, and I am kicking myself for not ordering "Very Pretty Vampire" or the "Glitter Tamer" topcoat, but it seems to be a lot of trouble to order now. You have to email a special email account, get a form, fill out the form, and then go on a wait list! This is testament to how wonderful and popular Lynnderellas are, but I think I am good now. I would rather let someone else who doesn't own any of these beauties get the chance to have some!

On that note, if anyone has "Very Pretty Vampire" and would like to swap it with me for "Snow Angel", please email me! "Snow Angel" is GORGEOUS, but I am just not loving it on me!!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Hello everyone! I have been having a great week. I am on vacation in Arizona. I absolutely love it! The landscape out here is beautiful and the weather is perfect!
I'm visiting friends and a few nights ago I kinda had a little too much wine, and then right before I was going to bed I thought "oh hey I should do my nails..." (I think we can all see where this is going, LOL)

I picked up some good polishes out here, one of them was Claire's "Disco". I LOVE holo glitter polishes. This is pure silver holo hexagons, all one size. Reminds me of American Apparel's "Light Year" which I wanted, but now I think "Disco" will satisfy me!

"Disco" is a little bit hard to apply, as are most medium/larger glitter polishes. I'm sure the wine didn't help my application skills!

I had a difficult time trying to get all the glitter evenly on my nail. You can see how it clumped in certain spots, particularly on my ring finger in the above photo.

It is a bit overkill, and it took some getting used to. It looks crazy rainbow shiny in direct sunlight of course, so much so that my camera couldn't capture it properly! I like that I can still see some of the flakies in between the glitter.

My dream polish would be a solid silver chrome that shines back a holo rainbow. Like the back of a CD. I think the closest I will get to that is a chunky holo glitter like this, or maybe one of those nail sticker things. I believe MinxLusion comes close, but I have not seen them IRL, so I can not be sure.

I'll probably leave this on until I get home. My gel mani is holding up pretty well, only the middle finger on my left and and my index on my right have chips. It has been almost 2 weeks.

Monday, January 9, 2012

As soon as I heard the FingerPaints was releasing a line of flakie topcoats I KNEW I needed them. I was at Sally's in early December and I found 2 of the colors- Twisted and Flashy. Score! I managed to find then early, before the official release date. They were stuck behind the main FingerPaints display. I love the thrill of a good nail polish hunt/find!
I had to wait until December 31st to find the other ones. I called my local Sallys to reserve them, and they said they were out on display already for the next day. I went and snatched them up!

My New Year's Eve manicure was going to be Essie's Sexy Divide (a dark shimmery purple) topped with Twisted and OPI's Lily I Love You (a gorgeous glitter flake in a sheer pink base). I decided to go get them professionally done. The night before I went, I found this from Nailderellanails. WOW. Aside from being beautiful, it was very similar to the manicure I had planned. The next day when I went to the salon I couldn't find Sexy Divide! So I remembered the "Unicorn Puke Remake" and chose a dark almost black red. I can't remember the name, sorry! The manicure came out beautiful. I didn't take pictures, but you can take a look at that link and see how good it looked!

The only problem was... it chipped so fast! :( So a week later I went back to the salon and got a black gel manicure and topped it with 2 coats FingerPaints Asylum and then 1 coat Motley. So far the black base hasn't chipped! I love it!

It actually is a tad more purple colored in real life. I'm not sure why "blurple" is so hard to photograph?!

You can see the slight green duochrome shift in the second picture.

The only problem with applying the flakes over the gel is that the flakes kind of melt onto the gel base when using polish remover to take off the flakes. They are hard to remove without physically picking off the flakes.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

I have come to the conclusion that Brazil (and Australia too, due to Picture Polish and Ozotic) have some great nail polishes. If you are a muti/duochrome-flakie-holo-glitter fiend like me, you might have noticed that there are some gorgeous polishes from these countries. I decided to torture myself and do some research to look around for some polishes that I probably won't be able to get, on blogs I can't even read. (Although how many people READ blogs, I know that I usually go for the pictures and then maybe read what has to be said. Actually, I do read certain bloggers. But usually the pictures. If you are reading this right now without skipping to the picture, well, I admire that!!)

From what I gather it will be released March 2012. It looks like there are 6 colors. What makes this special is that there appear to be 3 different magnet patterns, which are sold separately from the polish. I will definitely be on the look out for this when they are released!

Right now I am trying my hardest to not purchase any new nail polish that is even remotely dupe-y. I think I have reached the point in my collection where I have a lot of variations on the same color, and if I see something I don't have, I can franken it. Of course reading all of my favorite nail blogs doesn't help!! But I can be strong!!! LOL

That being said, I did just order a bunch of *special* colors from Llarowe. Lynnderellas, Hits Mari Moons, Picture Polish Flakies, Glitter Gals and Elytras. I also picked up the entire line of Finger Paints Special Effects topcoats from Sallys.